Book ii

. l. 746.) Suetonius tells us that Augustus would wear no clothes but those made by his wife, sister, or daughter.]

[Footnote 48: _Polluted hands._--Ver. 584. All persons who had been engaged in the burial of the dead were considered to be polluted, and were not allowed to enter the temples of the Gods till they had been purified. Among the Greeks, persons who had been supposed to have died in foreign countries, and whose funeral rites had been performed in an honorary manner by their own relatives, if it turned out that they were not dead, and they returned to their own country, were considered impure, and were only purified by being dressed in swaddling clothes, and treated like new-born infants. We shall, then, be hardly surprised at Juno considering Halcyone to be polluted by the death of her husband Ceyx, although at a distance, and as yet unknown to her.]

[Footnote 49: _The Cimmerians._--Ver. 592. Ovid appropriately places the abode of the drowsy God in the cold, damp, and foggy regions of the Cimmerians, who are supposed, by some authors, to have been a people of Sarmatia, or Scythia, near the Palus Mæotis, or sea of Azof. Other writers suppose that a fabulous race of people, said to live near Baiæ in Italy, and to inhabit dark caves throughout the day, while they sallied forth to plunder at night, are here referred to. This description of the abode of Sleep, and of his appearance and attendants, is supposed to have been borrowed by Ovid from one of the Greek poets.]

[Footnote 50: _Geese more sagacious._--Ver. 599. This is said in compliment to the geese, for the service they rendered, in giving the alarm, and saving the Capitol, when in danger of being taken by the Gauls.]

[Footnote 51: _Waters of Lethe._--Ver. 603. After the dead had tasted the waters of Lethe, one of the rivers of Hell, it was supposed that they lost all recollection of the events of their former life.]

[Footnote 52: _Took to flight._--Ver. 632. Clarke translates this line, ‘Away she scours, and returns through the bow through which she had come.’]

[Footnote 53: _Morpheus._--Ver. 635. Morpheus was so called from the Greek μορφὴ, ‘shape,’ or ‘figure,’ because he assumed various shapes. Icelos has his name from the Greek ἴκελος, ‘like,’ for a similar reason. Phobetor is from the Greek φοβὸς, ‘fear,’ because it was his office to terrify mortals. Lucian appears to mean the same Deity, under the name of Taraxion. Phantasos is from the Greek φάντασις, ‘fancy.’]

[Footnote 54: _In the Ægean Sea._--Ver. 663. The Ægean Sea lay between the city of Trachyn and the coast of Ionia, whither Ceyx had gone.]

[Footnote 55: _The inscription._--Ver. 706. The epitaphs on the tombs of the ancients usually contained the name of the person, his age, and (with the Greeks) some account of the principal events of his life. Halcyone, in her affectionate grief, promises her husband, at least, an honorary funeral, and a share in her own epitaph.]

[Footnote 56: _Seven calm days._--Ver. 745. Simonides mentions eleven as being the number of the days; Philochorus, nine; but Demagoras says seven, the number here adopted by Ovid.]

[Footnote 57: _Floating on the sea._--Ver. 746. The male of the kingfisher was said by the ancients to be so constant to his mate, that on her death he refused to couple with any other, for which reason the poets considered that bird as the emblem of conjugal affection. The sea was supposed to be always calm when the female was sitting; from which time of serenity, our proverb, which speaks of ‘Halcyon days,’ takes its rise.]

EXPLANATION.

According to the testimony of several of the ancient writers, Ceyx was the king of Trachyn, and was a prince of great knowledge and experience; and many had recourse to him to atone for the murders which they had committed, whether through imprudence or otherwise. Pausanias says that Eurystheus having summoned Ceyx to deliver up to him the children of Hercules, that prince, who was not able to maintain a war against so powerful a king, sent the youths to Theseus, who took them into his protection.

To recover from the melancholy consequent upon the death of his brother Dædalion and his niece Chione, he went to Claros to consult the oracle of Apollo, and was shipwrecked on his return; on which, his wife, Halcyone, was so afflicted, that she died of grief, or else threw herself into the sea, as Hyginus informs us. It was said that they were changed into the birds which we call kingfishers, a story which, probably, has no other foundation than the name of Halcyone, which signifies that bird; which by the ancients was considered to be the symbol of conjugal affection.

Apollodorus, however, does not give us so favourable an idea of the virtue of these persons as Ovid has done. According to him, it was their pride which proved the cause of their destruction. Jupiter enraged at Ceyx, because he had assumed his name as Halcyone had done that of Juno, changed them both into birds, he becoming a cormorant, and she a kingfisher. This story is remarkable for the beautiful and affecting manner in which it is told.

FABLE VIII. [XI.749-795]

The Nymph Hesperia flying from Æsacus, who is enamoured of her, is bitten by a serpent, and instantly dies from the effects of the wound. He is so afflicted at her death, that he throws himself into the sea, and is transformed into a didapper.

Some old man[58] observes them as they fly over the widely extended seas, and commends their love, preserved to the end {of their existence}. One, close by, or the same, if chance so orders it, says, “This one, too, which you see, as it cuts through the sea, and having its legs drawn up,” pointing at a didapper, with its wide throat, “was the son of a king. And, if you want to come down to him in one lengthened series, his ancestors are Ilus, and Assaracus, and Ganymede,[59] snatched away by Jupiter, and the aged Laomedon, and Priam, to whom were allotted the last days of Troy. He himself was the brother of Hector, and had he not experienced a strange fate in his early youth, perhaps he would have had a name not inferior to {that} of Hector; although the daughter of Dymas bore this {last}. Alexirhoë, the daughter of the two-horned Granicus,[60] is said secretly to have brought forth Æsacus, under shady Ida.

“He loathed the cities, and distant from the splendid court, frequented the lonely mountains, and the unambitious fields; nor went but rarely among the throngs of Ilium. Yet, not having a breast either churlish, or impregnable to love, he espies Hesperie, the daughter of Cebrenus,[61] on the banks of her sire, who has been often sought by him throughout all the woods, drying her locks, thrown over her shoulders, in the sun. The Nymph, {thus} seen, takes to flight, just as the frightened hind from the tawny wolf; and {as} the water-duck, surprised at a distance, having left her {wonted} stream, from the hawk. Her the Trojan hero pursues, and, swift with love, closely follows her, made swift by fear. Behold! a snake, lurking in the grass, with its barbed sting, wounds her foot as she flies, and leaves its venom in her body. With her flight is her life cut short. Frantic, he embraces her breathless, and cries aloud,-- “I grieve, I grieve that {ever} I pursued {thee}. But I did not apprehend this; nor was it of so much value to me to conquer. We two have proved the destruction of wretched thee. The wound was given by the serpent; by me was the occasion given. I should be more guilty than he, did I not give the consolation for thy fate by my own death.” {Thus} he said; and from a rock which the hoarse waves had undermined, he hurled himself into the sea. Tethys, pitying him as he fell, received him softly, and covered him with feathers as he swam through the sea; and the power of obtaining the death he sought was not granted to him. The lover is vexed that, against his will, he is obliged to live on, and that opposition is made to his spirit, desirous to depart from its wretched abode. And, as he has assumed newformed wings on his shoulders, he flies aloft, and again he throws his body in the waves: his feathers break the fall. Æsacus is enraged; and headlong he plunges into the deep,[62] and incessantly tries the way of destruction. Love caused his leanness; the spaces between the joints of his legs are long; his neck remains long, {and} his head is far away from his body. He loves the sea, and has his name because he plunges[63] in it.

[Footnote 58: _Some old man._--Ver. 749-50. ‘Hos aliquis senior--spectat;’ these words are translated by Clarke, ‘Some old blade spies them.’]

[Footnote 59: _Ganymede._--Ver. 756. Ovid need not have inserted Assaracus and Ganymede, as they were only the brothers of Ilus, and the three were the sons of Tros. Ilus was the father of Laomedon, whose son was Priam, the father of Æsacus.]

[Footnote 60: _Granicus._--Ver. 763. The Granicus was a river of Mysia, near which Alexander the Great defeated Darius with immense slaughter.]

[Footnote 61: _Cebrenus._--Ver. 769. The Cebrenus was a little stream of Phrygia, not far from Troy.]

[Footnote 62: _Plunges into the deep._--Ver. 791-2. ‘Inque profundum Pronus abit,’ Clarke renders, ‘Goes plumb down into the deep.’ Certainly this is nearer to its French origin, ‘a plomb,’ than the present form, ‘plump down;’ but, like many other instances in his translation, it decidedly does not help us, as he professes to do, to ‘the attainment of the elegancy of this great Poet.’]

[Footnote 63: _Because he plunges._--Ver. 795. He accounts for the Latin name of the diver, or didapper, ‘mergus,’ by saying that it was so called, ‘a mergendo,’ from its diving, which doubtless was the origin of the name, though not taking its rise in the fiction here related by the Poet.]

EXPLANATION.

Ovid and Apollodorus agree that Æsacus was the son of Priam, and that he was changed into a didapper, or diver, but they differ in the other circumstances of his life. Instead of being the son of Alexirhoë, Apollodorus says that he was the son of Priam and Arisbe the daughter of Merope, his first wife; that his father made him marry Sterope, who dying very young, he was so afflicted at her death, that he threw himself into the sea. He also says that Priam having repudiated Arisbe to marry Hecuba, the daughter of Cisseus, Æsacus seeing his mother-in-law pregnant of her second son, foretold his father that her progeny would be the cause of a bloody war, which would end in the destruction of the kingdom of Troy; and that upon this prediction, the infant, when born, was exposed on Mount Ida.

Tzetzes adds, that Æsacus told his father that it was absolutely necessary to put to death both the mother and the infant which was born on that same day; on which Priam being informed that Cilla, the wife of Thymætes, being delivered on that day of a son, he ordered them both to be killed; thinking thereby to escape the realization of the prediction. Servius, on the authority of Euphorion, relates the story in much the same manner; but a poet quoted by Cicero in his first book on Divination, says that it was the oracle of Zelia, a little town at the foot of Mount Ida, which gave that answer as an interpretation of the dream of Hecuba. Pausanias says it was the sibyl Herophila who interpreted the dream, while other ancient writers state that it was Cassandra. Apollodorus says that Æsacus learned from his grandfather Merops the art of foretelling things to come.

BOOK THE TWELFTH.

FABLES I. AND II. [XII.1-145]

The Greeks assemble their troops at Aulis, to proceed against the city of Troy, and revenge the rape of Helen; but the fleet is detained in port by contrary winds. Calchas, the priest, after a prediction concerning the success of the expedition, declares that the weather will never be favourable till Agamemnon shall have sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia. She is immediately led to the altar for that purpose; but Diana, appeased by this act of obedience, carries away the maiden, and substitutes a hind in her place, on which a fair wind arises. Upon the Greeks landing at Troy, a battle is fought, in which Protesilaüs is killed by Hector, and Achilles kills Cygnus, a Trojan, on which his father Neptune transforms him into a swan.

His father Priam mourned him, not knowing that Æsacus, having assumed wings, was {still} living; Hector, too, with his brothers, made unavailing offerings[1] at a tomb, that bore his name {on it}. The presence of Paris was wanting, at this mournful office: who, soon after, brought into his country a lengthened war, together with a ravished wife;[2] and a thousand ships[3] uniting together, followed him, and, together {with them}, the whole body[4] of the Pelasgian nation. Nor would vengeance have been delayed, had not the raging winds made the seas impassable, and the Bœotian land detained in fishy Aulis the ships ready to depart. Here, when they had prepared a sacrifice to Jupiter, after the manner of their country, as the ancient altar was heated with kindled fires, the Greeks beheld an azure-coloured serpent creep into a plane tree, which was standing near the sacrifice they had begun. There was on the top of the tree a nest of twice four birds, which the serpent seized[5] together, and the dam as she fluttered around {the scene of} her loss, and he buried them in his greedy maw. All stood amazed. But {Calchas}, the son of Thestor, a soothsayer, foreseeing the truth, says, “Rejoice, Pelasgians, we shall conquer. Troy will fall, but the continuance of our toil will be long;” and he allots the nine birds to the years of the war. {The serpent}, just as he is, coiling around the green branches in the tree, becomes a stone, and, under the form of a serpent, retains that stone {form}.

Nereus continued boisterous in the Ionian waves, and did not impel the sails onwards; and there are some who think that Neptune favoured Troy, because he made the walls of the city. But not {so} the son of Thestor. For neither was he ignorant, nor did he conceal, that the wrath of the virgin Goddess must be appeased by the blood of a virgin. After the public good had prevailed over affection, and the king over the father, and Iphigenia, ready to offer her chaste blood, stood before the altar, while the priests were weeping; the Goddess was appeased, and cast a mist before their eyes, and, amid the service and the hurry of the rites, and the voices of the suppliants, is said to have changed Iphigenia, the Mycenian maiden, for a substituted hind. Wherefore, when the Goddess was appeased by a death which was {more} fitting, and at the same moment the wrath of Phœbe, and of the sea was past, the thousand ships received the winds astern, and having suffered much, they gained the Phrygian shore.

There is a spot in the middle of the world, between the land and the sea, and the regions of heaven, the confines of the threefold universe, whence is beheld whatever anywhere exists, although it may be in far {distant} regions, and every sound pierces the hollow ears. {Of this place} Fame is possessed, and chooses for herself a habitation on the top[6] of a tower, and has added innumerable avenues, and a thousand openings to her house, and has closed the entrances with no gates. Night and day are they open. It is all of sounding brass; it is all resounding, and it reechoes the voice, and repeats what it hears. Within there is no rest, and silence in no part. Nor yet is there a clamour, but the murmur of a low voice, such as is wont to arise from the waves of the sea, if one listens at a distance, or like the sound which the end of the thundering {makes} when Jupiter has clashed the black clouds together. A crowd occupies the hall; the fickle vulgar come and go; and a thousand rumours, false mixed with true, wander up and down, and circulate confused words. Of these, some fill the empty ears with conversation; some are carrying elsewhere what is told them; the measure of the fiction is ever on the increase, and each fresh narrator adds something to what he has heard. There, is Credulity, there, rash Mistake, and empty Joy, and alarmed Fears, and sudden Sedition, and Whispers of doubtful origin. She sees what things are done in heaven and on the sea, and on the earth; and she pries into the whole universe.

She has made it known that Grecian ships are on their way, with valiant troops: nor does the enemy appear in arms unlooked for. The Trojans oppose their landing, and defend the shore, and thou, Protesilaüs,[7] art, by the decrees of fate, the first to fall by the spear of Hector;[8] and the battles {now} commenced, and the courageous spirits of {the Trojans}, and Hector, {till then} unknown, cost the Greeks dear. Nor do the Phrygians experience at small expense of blood what the Grecian right hand can do. And now the Sigæan shores are red {with blood}: now Cygnus, the son of Neptune, has slain a thousand men. Now is Achilles pressing on in his chariot, and levelling the Trojan ranks, with the blow of his Peleian spear; and seeking through the lines either Cygnus or Hector, he engages with Cygnus: Hector is reserved for the tenth year. Then animating the horses, having their white necks pressed with the yoke, he directed his chariot against the enemy, and brandishing his quivering spear with his arm, he said, “O youth, whoever thou art, take this consolation in thy death, that thou art slain by the Hæmonian Achilles.”

Thus far the grandson of Æacus. His heavy lance followed his words. But, although there was no missing in the unerring lance, yet it availed nothing, by the sharpness of its point, {thus} discharged; and as it only bruised his breast with a blunt stroke, {the other} said, “Thou son of a Goddess, (for by report have we known of thee beforehand) why art thou surprised that wounds are warded off from me? (for {Achilles} was surprised); not this helmet that thou seest tawny with the horse’s mane, nor the hollowed shield, the burden of my left arm, are assistant to me; from them ornament {alone} is sought; for this cause, too, Mars is wont to take up arms. All the assistance of defensive armour shall be removed, {and} yet I shall come off unhurt. It is something to be born, not of a Nereid,[9] but {of one} who rules both Nereus and his daughter, and the whole ocean.”

{Thus} he spoke; and he hurled against the descendant of Æacus his dart, destined to stick in the rim of his shield; it broke through both the brass and the next nine folds of bull’s hide; but stopping in the tenth circle {of the hide}, the hero wrenched it out, and again hurled the quivering weapon with a strong hand; again his body was without a wound, and unharmed, nor was a third spear able {even} to graze Cygnus, unprotected, and exposing himself. Achilles raged no otherwise than as a bull,[10] in the open Circus,[11] when with his dreadful horns he butts against the purple-coloured garments, used as the means of provoking him, and perceives that his wounds are evaded. Still, he examines whether the point has chanced to fall from off the spear. It is {still} adhering to the shaft. “My hand then is weak,” says he, “and it has spent {all} the strength it had before, upon one man. For decidedly it was strong enough, both when at first I overthrew the walls of Lyrnessus, or when I filled both Tenedos and Eëtionian[12] Thebes with their own blood. Or when Caÿcus[13] flowed empurpled with the slaughter of its people: and Telephus[14] was twice sensible of the virtue of my spear. Here, too, where so many have been slain, heaps of whom I both have made along this shore, and I {now} behold, my right hand has proved mighty, and is mighty.”

{Thus} he spoke; and as if he distrusted what he had done before, he hurled his spear against Menœtes, one of the Lycian multitude,[15] who {was} standing opposite, and he tore asunder both his coat of mail, and his breast beneath it. He beating the solid earth with his dying head, he drew the same weapon from out of the reeking wound, and said, “This is the hand, this the lance, with which I conquered but now. The same will I use against him; in his {case}, I pray that the event may prove the same.” Thus he said, and he hurled it at Cygnus, nor did the ashen lance miss him; and, not escaped {by him}, it resounded on his left shoulder: thence it was repelled, as though by a wall, or a solid rock. Yet Achilles saw Cygnus marked with blood, where he had been struck, and he rejoiced, {but in} vain. There was no wound; that was the blood of Menœtes.

Then indeed, raging, he leaps headlong from his lofty chariot, and hand to hand, with his gleaming sword striking at his fearless foe, he perceives that the shield and the helmet are pierced with his sword, and that his weapon, too, is blunted upon his hard body. He endures it no longer; and drawing back his shield, he three or four times strikes the face of the hero, and his hollow temples, with the hilt of the sword; and following, he presses onward as the other gives ground, and confounds him, and drives him on, and gives him no respite in his confusion. Horror seizes on him, and darkness swims before his eyes; and as he moves backwards his retreating steps, a stone in the middle of the field stands in his way. Impelled over this, with his breast upwards, Achilles throws Cygnus with great violence, and dashes him[16] to the earth. Then, pressing down his breast with his shield and his hard knees, he draws tight the straps of his helmet; which, fastened beneath his pressed chin, squeeze close his throat, and take away his respiration and the passage of his breath.

He is preparing to strip his vanquished {foe}; he sees {nothing but} his armour, left behind. The God of the Ocean changed his body into a white bird, of which he {so} lately bore the name.

[Footnote 1: _Unavailing offerings._--Ver. 3. ‘Inferias inanes’ is a poetical expression, signifying the offering sacrifices of honey, milk, wine, blood, flowers, frankincense, and other things, at a tomb, which was empty or honorary. The Greeks called these kind of sacrifices by the name of χοαὶ.]

[Footnote 2: _A ravished wife._--Ver. 5. This was Helen, the wife of Menelaüs, whose abduction by Paris was the cause of the Trojan war.]

[Footnote 3: _A thousand ships._--Ver. 7. That is, a thousand in round numbers. For Homer makes them, 1186; Dictys Cretensis, 1225; and Dares, 1140.]

[Footnote 4: _The whole body._--Ver. 7. The adjective ‘commune’ is here used substantively, and signifies ‘the whole body.’]

[Footnote 5: _Serpent seized._--Ver. 16-17. Clarke translates this line, ‘Which the snake whipt up, as also the dam flying about her loss, and buried them in his greedy paunch.’]

[Footnote 6: _On the top._--Ver. 43. ‘Summaque domum sibi legit in arce,’ is translated by Clarke, ‘And chooses there a house for herself, on the very tip-top of it.’]

[Footnote 7: _Protesilaüs._--Ver. 68. He was the husband of Laodamia, the daughter of Acastus. His father was Iphiclus, who was noted for his extreme swiftness.]

[Footnote 8: _Spear of Hector._--Ver. 67. Some writers say that he fell by the hand of Æneas.]

[Footnote 9: _Of a Nereid._--Ver. 93. Cygnus says this sarcastically, in allusion to Achilles being born of Thetis, a daughter of Nereus.]

[Footnote 10: _As a bull._--Ver. 103-4. Clarke translates these lines in this comical strain: ‘Achilles was as mad as a bull in the open Circus, when he pushes at the red coat, stuffed, used on purpose to provoke him.’]

[Footnote 11: _The open Circus._--Ver. 104. We learn from Seneca, that it was the custom in the ‘venationes’ of the Circus to irritate the bull against his antagonist, by thrusting in his path figures stuffed with straw or hay, and covered with red cloth. Similar means are used to provoke the bull in the Spanish bull-fights of the present day.]

[Footnote 12: _Eëtionian._--Ver. 110. Eëtion, the father of Andromache, the wife of Hector, was the king of Thebes in Cilicia, which place was ravaged by the Greeks for having sent assistance to the Trojans.]

[Footnote 13: _Caÿcus._--Ver. 111. The Caÿcus was a river of Mysia, in Asia Minor, which country had incurred the resentment of the Greeks, for having assisted the Trojans.]

[Footnote 14: _Telephus._--Ver. 112. Telephus, the son of Hercules and the Nymph Auge, was wounded in combat by Achilles. By the direction of the oracle, he applied to Achilles for his cure, which was effected by means of the rust of the weapon with which the wound was made.]

[Footnote 15: _Lycian multitude._--Ver. 116. The Lycians, whose territory was in Asia Minor, between Caria and Pamphylia, were allies of the Trojans.]

[Footnote 16: _And dashes him._--Ver. 139. Clarke renders this line, ‘He overset him, and thwacked him against the ground.’]

EXPLANATION.

It is not improbable that the prediction of Calchas, at Aulis, that the war against Troy would endure nine years, had no other foundation than his desire to check an enterprise which must be attended with much bloodshed, and difficulties of the most formidable nature. It is not unlikely, too, that this interpretation of the story of the serpent devouring the birds may have been planned by some of the Grecian generals, who did not dare openly to refuse their assistance to Agamemnon. The story of Iphigenia was, perhaps, founded on a similar policy. The ancient poets and historians are by no means agreed as to the fate of Iphigenia, as some say that she really was sacrificed, while others state that she was transformed into a she-bear, others into an old woman, and Nicander affirms that she was changed into a heifer.

There is no story more celebrated among the ancients than that of the intended immolation of Iphigenia. Euripides wrote two tragedies on the subject. Homer, however, makes no allusion to the story of Iphigenia; but he mentions Iphianassa, the daughter of Agamemnon, who was sent for, to be a hostage on his reconciliation with Achilles; she is probably the same person that is meant by the later poets, under the name of Iphigenia.

It has been suggested by some modern commentators, that the story of Iphigenia was founded on the sacrifice of his own daughter, by Jeptha, the judge of Israel, which circumstance happened much about the same time. The story of the substitution of the hind for the damsel, when about to be slain, was possibly founded on the substituted offering for Isaac when about to be offered by his father; for it is not probable that the people of Greece were entirely ignorant of the existence of the books of Moses, and that wonderful narrative would be not unlikely to make an impression on minds ever ready to be attracted by the marvellous. Some writers have taken pains to show that Agamemnon did not sacrifice, or contemplate sacrificing, his own daughter, by asserting that the Iphigenia here mentioned was the daughter of Helen, who was educated by Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon, and the sister of Helen. Pausanias also adopts this view, and gives for his authorities Euphorion of Chalcis, Alexander, Stesichorus, and the people of Argos, who preserved a tradition to the same effect.

Lucretius, Virgil, and Diodorus Siculus are in the number of those who assert that Iphigenia actually was immolated. According to Dictys the Cretan, and several of the ancient scholiasts, Ulysses having left the Grecian camp without the knowledge of Agamemnon, went to Argos, and returned with Iphigenia, under the pretext that her father intended to marry her to Achilles. Some writers state that Achilles was in love with Iphigenia; and that he was greatly enraged at Ulysses for bringing her to the camp, and opposed her sacrifice to the utmost of his power.

Ovid then proceeds to recount the adventures of the Greeks, after their arrival at Troy. An oracle had warned the Greeks, that he who should be the first to land on the Trojan shores, would inevitably be slain. Protesilaüs seeing that this prediction damped the courage of his companions, led the way, and sacrificed his life for the safety of his friends, being slain by Hector immediately on his landing. Cygnus, signalizing himself by his bravery, attracted the attention of Achilles, who singled him out as a worthy antagonist. It was said that this hero was the son of Neptune; perhaps because he was powerful by sea, and the prince of some island in the Archipelago. He was said to be invulnerable, most probably because his shield was arrow-proof. The story of his transformation into a swan, has evidently no other foundation than the resemblance between his name and that of that bird.

FABLES III. AND IV. [XII.146-535]

A truce ensuing, the Grecian chiefs having assembled at a feast, express their surprise at the fact of Cygnus being invulnerable. Nestor, by way of showing a still more surprising instance, relates how the Nymph Cænis, the daughter of Elatus, having yielded to the caresses of Neptune, was transformed by him into a man, and made invulnerable. Cæneus being present at the wedding feast of Pirithoüs, the son of Ixion, where Eurytus was a guest, the latter, being elevated with wine, made an attempt upon Hippodamia, the bride; on which a quarrel arose between the Centaurs and the Lapithæ. After many on both sides had been slain, Cæneus still remained unhurt; on which, the Centaurs having heaped up trunks of trees upon him, he was pressed to death; Neptune then changed his body into a bird.

This toil[17] {and} this combat brought on a cessation for many days; and both sides rested, laying aside their arms. And while a watchful guard was keeping the Phrygian walls, and a watchful guard was keeping the Argive trenches, a festive day had arrived, on which Achilles, the conqueror of Cygnus, appeased Pallas with the blood of a heifer, adorned with fillets. As soon as he had placed its entrails[18] upon the glowing altars, and the smell, acceptable to the Deities, mounted up to the skies, the sacred rites had their share, the other part was served up at the table. The chiefs reclined on couches, and sated their bodies with roasted flesh,[19] and banished both their cares and their thirst with wine. No harps, no melody of voices,[20] no long pipe of boxwood pierced with many a hole, delights them; but in discourse they pass the night, and valour is the subject-matter of their conversation. They relate the combats of the enemy and their own; and often do they delight to recount, in turn, both the dangers that they have encountered and that they have surmounted. For of what {else} should Achilles speak? or of what, in preference, should they speak before the great Achilles? {But} especially the recent victory over the conquered Cygnus was the subject of discourse. It seemed wonderful to them all, that the body of the youth was penetrable by no weapon, and was susceptible of no wounds, and that it blunted the steel itself. This same thing, the grandson of Æacus, this, the Greeks wondered at.

When thus Nestor says {to them}: “Cygnus has been the only despiser of weapons in your time, and penetrable by no blows. But I myself formerly saw the Perrhæbean[21] Cæneus bear a thousand blows with his body unhurt; Cæneus the Perrhæbean, {I say}, who, famous for his achievements, inhabited Othrys. And that this, too, might be the more wondrous in him, he was born a woman.” They are surprised, whoever are present, at the singular nature of this prodigy, and they beg him to tell the story. Among them, Achilles says, “Pray tell us, (for we all have the same desire to hear it,) O eloquent old man,[22] the wisdom of our age; who was {this} Cæneus, {and} why changed to the opposite sex? in what war, and in the engagements of what contest was he known to thee? by whom was he conquered, if he was conquered by any one?”

Then the aged man {replied}: “Although tardy old age is a disadvantage to me, and many things which I saw in my early years escape me {now}, yet I remember most {of them}; and there is nothing, amid so many transactions of war and peace, that is more firmly fixed in my mind than that circumstance. And if extended age could make any one a witness of many deeds, I have lived two hundred[23] years, {and} now my third century is being passed {by me}. Cænis, the daughter of Elatus, was remarkable for her charms; the most beauteous virgin among the Thessalian maids, and one sighed for in vain by the wishes of many wooers through the neighbouring {cities}, and through thy cities, Achilles, for she was thy countrywoman. Perhaps, too, Peleus would have attempted that alliance; but at that time the marriage of thy mother had either befallen him, or had been promised him. Cænis did not enter into any nuptial ties; and as she was walking along the lonely shore, she suffered violence from the God of the ocean. ’Twas thus that report stated; and when Neptune had experienced the pleasures of this new amour, he said, ‘Be thy wishes secure from all repulse; choose whatever thou mayst desire.’ The same report has related this too; Cænis replied, ‘This mishap makes my desire extreme, that I may not be in a condition to suffer any such thing {in future}. Grant that I be no {longer} a woman, {and} thou wilt have granted me all.’ She spoke these last words with a hoarser tone, and the voice might seem to be that of a man, as {indeed} it was.

“For now the God of the deep ocean had consented to her wish; and had granted moreover that he should not be able to be pierced by any wounds, or to fall by {any} steel. Exulting in his privilege, the Atracian[24] departed; and {now} spent his time in manly exercises, and roamed over the Peneïan plains. {Pirithoüs}, the son of the bold Ixion, had married Hippodame,[25] and had bidden the cloud-born monsters to sit down at the tables ranged in order, in a cave shaded with trees. The Hæmonian nobles were there; I, too, was there, and the festive palace resounded with the confused rout. Lo! they sing the marriage song, and the halls smoke with the fires;[26] the maiden, too, is there, remarkable for her beauty, surrounded by a crowd of matrons and newly married women. We {all} pronounce Pirithoüs fortunate in her for a wife; an omen which we had well nigh falsified. For thy breast, Eurytus, most savage of the savage Centaurs, is inflamed as much with wine as with seeing the maiden; and drunkenness, redoubled by lust, holds sway {over thee}. On the sudden the tables being overset, disturb the feast, and the bride is violently dragged away by her seized hair. Eurytus snatches up Hippodame, {and} the others such as each one fancies, or is able {to seize}; and there is {all} the appearance of a captured city. The house rings with the cries of women. Quickly we all rise; and first, Theseus says, ‘What madness, Eurytus, is impelling thee, who, while I {still} live, dost provoke Pirithoüs, and, in thy ignorance, in one dost injure two?’ And that the valiant hero may not say these things in vain, he pushes them off as they are pressing on, and takes her whom they have seized away from them as they grow furious.

“He says nothing in answer, nor, indeed, can he defend such actions by words; but he attacks the face of her protector with insolent hands, and strikes his generous breast. By chance, there is near at hand an ancient bowl, rough with projecting figures, which, huge as it is, the son of Ægeus, himself huger {still}, takes up and hurls full in his face. He, vomiting both from his wounds and his mouth clots of blood,[27] and brains and wine together, lying on his back, kicks on the soaking sand. {The} double-limbed[28] {Centaurs} are inflamed at the death of their brother; and all vying, with one voice exclaim, ‘To arms! to arms!’ Wine gives them courage, and, in the first onset, cups hurled are flying about, and shattered casks[29] and hollow cauldrons; things before adapted for a banquet, now for war and slaughter. First, the son of Ophion, Amycus, did not hesitate to spoil the interior of the house of its ornaments; and first, from the shrine he tore up a chandelier,[30] thick set with blazing lamps; and lifting it on high, like him who attempts to break the white neck of the bull with sacrificial axe, he dashed it against the forehead of Celadon the Lapithean, and left his skull mashed into his face, no {longer} to be recognized. His eyes started out, and the bones of his face being dashed to pieces, his nose was driven back, and was fixed in the middle of his palate. Him, Belates the Pellæan, having torn away the foot of a maple table, laid flat on the ground, with his chin sunk upon his breast, and vomiting forth his teeth mixed with blood; and sent him, by a twofold wound, to the shades of Tartarus.

“As Gryneus stood next, looking at the smoking altar with a grim look, he said, ‘{And} why do we not make use of this?’ and {then} he raised an immense altar, together with its fire; and hurled it into the midst of the throng of the Lapithæ, and struck down two {of them}, Broteus and Orius. The mother of Orius was Mycale, who was known by her incantations to have often drawn down the horns of the struggling moon. {On this} Exadius says, ‘Thou shalt not go unpunished, if only the opportunity of getting a weapon is given me;’ and, as his weapon, he wields the antlers of a votive stag,[31] which were upon a lofty pine-tree. With the double branches of these, Gryneus is pierced through the eyes, and has those eyes scooped out. A part of them adheres to the antlers, a part runs down his beard, and hangs down clotted with gore. Lo! Rhœtus snatches up an immense flaming brand, from the middle of the altar, and on the right side breaks through the temples of Charaxus, covered with yellow hair. His locks, seized by the violent flames, burn like dry corn, and the blood seared in the wound emits a terrific noise in its hissing, such as the iron glowing in the flames is often wont to emit, which, when the smith has drawn it out with the crooked pincers, he plunges into the trough; whereon it whizzes, and, sinking in the bubbling water, hisses. Wounded, he shakes the devouring fire from his locks, and takes upon his shoulders the threshold, torn up out of the ground, a {whole} waggon-load, which its very weight hinders him from throwing full against the foe. The stony mass, too, bears down Cometes, a friend, who is standing at a short distance; nor does Rhœtus {then} restrain his joy, {and} he says, ‘In such manner do I pray that the rest of the throng of thy party may be brave;’ and {then} he increases the wound, redoubled with the half-burnt stake, and three or four times he breaks the sutures of his head with heavy blows, and its bones sink within the oozing brains.

“Victorious, he passes on to Evagrus, and Corythus, and Dryas; of which {number}, when Corythus, having his cheeks covered[32] with their first down, has fallen, Evagrus says, ‘What glory has been acquired by thee, in killing a boy?’ Rhœtus permits him to say no more, and fiercely thrusts the glowing flames into the open mouth of the hero, as he is speaking, and through the mouth into the breast. Thee, too, cruel Dryas, he pursues, whirling the fire around his head, but the same issue does not await thee as well. Thou piercest him with a stake burnt at the end, while triumphing in the success of an uninterrupted slaughter, in the spot where the neck is united to the shoulder. Rhœtus groans aloud, and with difficulty wrenches the stake out of the hard bone, and, drenched in his own blood, he flies. Orneus flies, too, and Lycabas, and Medon, wounded in his right shoulder-blade, and Thaumas with Pisenor; Mermerus, too, who lately excelled all in speed of foot, {but} now goes more slowly from the wound he has received; Pholus, too, and Melaneus, and Abas a hunter of boars, and Astylos the augur, who has in vain dissuaded his own party from this warfare. He also says to Nessus,[33] as he dreads the wounds, ‘Fly not! {for} thou shalt be reserved for the bow of Hercules.’ But Eurynomus and Lycidas, and Areos, and Imbreus did not escape death, all of whom the right hand of Dryas pierced right through. Thou, too, Crenæus, didst receive a wound in front,[34] although thou didst turn thy back in flight; for looking back, thou didst receive the fatal steel between thy two eyes, where the nose is joined to the lower part of the forehead. In the midst of so much noise, Aphidas was lying fast asleep from the wine which he had drunk incessantly, and was not aroused, and in his languid hand was grasping the mixed bowl, stretched at full length upon the shaggy skin of a bear of Ossa. Soon as Phorbas beheld him from afar, wielding no arms, he inserted his fingers in the strap of his lance,[35] and said, ‘Drink thy wine mingled with {the water of} Styx;’ and, delaying no longer, he hurled his javelin against the youth, and the ash pointed with steel was driven into his neck, as, by chance, he lay {there} on his back. His death happened without his being sensible of it; and the blood flowed from his full throat, both upon the couch and into the bowl itself.

“I saw Petræus endeavouring to tear up an acorn-bearing oak from the earth; {and}, as he was grasping it in his embrace, and was shaking it on this side and that, and was moving about the loosened tree, the lance of Pirithoüs hurled at the ribs of Petræus, transfixed his struggling breast together with the tough oak. They said, {too}, that Lycus fell by the valour of Pirithoüs, {and} that Chromis fell {by the hand} of Pirithoüs. But each of them {gave} less glory to the conqueror, than Dictys and Helops gave. Helops was transfixed by the javelin, which passed right through his temples, and, hurled from the right side, penetrated to his left ear. Dictys, slipping from the steep point of a rock, while, in his fear, he is flying from the pursuing son of Ixion, falls down headlong, and, by the weight of his body, breaks a huge ash tree, and spits his own entrails upon it, {thus} broken. Aphareus advances {as} his avenger, and endeavours to hurl a stone torn away from the mountain. As he is endeavouring {to do so}, the son of Ægeus attacks him with an oaken club, and breaks the huge bones of his arm, and has neither leisure, nor, {indeed}, does he care to put his useless body to death; and he leaps upon the back of the tall Bianor, not used to bear[36] any other than himself; and he fixes his knees in his ribs, and holding his long hair, seized with his left hand, shatters his face, and his threatening features, and his very hard temples, with the knotty oak. With his oak, {too}, he levels Nedymnus, and Lycotas the darter, and Hippasus having his breast covered with his flowing beard, and Ripheus, who towered above the topmost woods, and Tereus, who used to carry home the bears, caught in the Hæmonian mountains, alive and raging.

“Demoleon could not any longer endure Theseus enjoying this success in the combat, and he tried with vast efforts to tear up from the thick-set wood an aged pine; because he could not effect this, he hurled it, broken short, against his foe. But Theseus withdrew afar from the approaching missile, through the warning of Pallas; so {at least} he himself wished it to be thought. Yet the tree did not fall without effect: for it struck off from the throat of the tall Crantor, both his breast and his left shoulder. He, Achilles, had been the armour-bearer of thy father: him Amyntor, king of the Dolopians,[37] when conquered in war, had given to the son of Æacus, as a pledge and confirmation of peace. When Peleus saw him at a distance, mangled with a foul wound, he said, ‘Accept however, Crantor, most beloved of youths, this sacrifice;’ and, with a strong arm, and energy of intention, he hurled his ashen lance against Demoleon, which broke through the enclosures of his ribs, and quivered, sticking amid the bones. He draws out with his hand the shaft without the point; even that follows, with much difficulty; the point is retained within his lungs. The very pain gives vigour to his resolution; {though} wounded, he rears against the enemy, and tramples upon the hero with his horse’s feet. The other receives the re-echoing strokes upon his helmet and his shield, and defends his shoulders, and holds his arms extended before him, and through the shoulder-blades he pierces two breasts[38] at one stroke. But first, from afar, he had consigned to death Phlegræus, and Hyles; in closer combat, Hiphinoüs and Clanis. To these is added Dorylas, who had his temples covered with a wolf’s skin, and the real horns of oxen reddened with much blood, that performed the duty of a cruel weapon.

“To him I said, for courage gave me strength, ‘Behold, how much thy horns are inferior to my steel;’ and {then} I threw my javelin. When he could not avoid this, he held up his right hand before his forehead, about to receive the blow; {and} to his forehead his hand was pinned. A shout arose; but Peleus struck him delaying, and overpowered by the painful wound, (for he was standing next to him) with his sword beneath the middle of his belly. He leaped forth, and fiercely dragged his own bowels on the ground, and trod on them {thus} dragged, and burst them {thus} trodden; and he entangled his legs, as well in them, and fell down, with his belly emptied {of its inner parts}. Nor did thy beauty, Cyllarus,[39] save thee while fighting, if only we allow beauty to that {monstrous} nature {of thine}. His beard was beginning {to grow}; the colour of his beard was that of gold; and golden-coloured hair was hanging from his shoulders to the middle of his shoulder-blades. In his face there was a pleasing briskness; his neck, and his shoulders, and his hands, and his breast {were} resembling the applauded statues of the artists, and {so} in those parts in which he was a man; nor was the shape of the horse beneath that {shape}, faulty and inferior to {that of} the man. Give him {but} the neck and the head {of a horse, and} he would be worthy of Castor. So fit is his back to be sat upon, so stands his breast erect with muscle; {he is} all over blacker than black pitch; yet his tail is white; the colour, too, of his legs is white. Many a female of his own kind longed for him; but Hylonome alone gained him, than whom no female more handsome lived in the lofty woods, among the half beasts. She alone attaches Cyllarus, both by her blandishments, and by loving, and by confessing that she loves him. Her care, too, of her person is as great as can be in those limbs: so that her hair is smoothed with a comb; so that she now decks herself with rosemary, now with violets or roses, {and} sometimes she wears white lilies; and twice a day she washes her face with streams that fall from the height of the Pagasæan wood; {and} twice she dips her body in the stream: and she throws over her shoulder or her left side no skins but what are becoming, and are those of choice beasts.

“Their love was equal: together they wandered upon the mountains; together they entered the caves; and then, too, together had they entered the Lapithæan house; together were they waging the fierce warfare. The author {of the deed} is unknown: {but} a javelin came from the left side, and pierced thee, Cyllarus, below {the spot} where the breast is joined to the neck. The heart, being pierced with a small wound, grew cold, together with the whole body, after the weapon was drawn out. Immediately, Hylonome receives his dying limbs, and cherishes the wound, by laying her hand on it, and places her mouth on his, and strives to stop the fleeting life. When she sees him dead, having uttered what the clamour hinders from reaching my ears, she falls upon the weapon that has pierced him, and as she dies, embraces her husband. He, too, {now} stands before my eyes, Phæocomes, {namely}, who had bound six lions’ skins together with connecting knots; covered all over, both horse and man. He, having discharged the trunk of a tree, which two yokes of oxen joined together could hardly have moved, battered the son of Phonolenus on the top of his head. The very broad round form of his skull was broken; and through his mouth, and through his hollow nostrils, and his eyes, and his ears, his softened brains poured down; just as curdled milk is wont through the oaken twigs, or as {any} liquor flows under the weight of a well-pierced sieve, and is squeezed out thick through the numerous holes. But I, while he was preparing to strip him of his arms as he lay, (this thy sire knows,) plunged my sword into the lower part of his belly, as he was spoiling him. Chthonius, too, and Teleboas, lay {pierced} by my sword. The former was bearing a two-forked bough {as his weapon}, the latter a javelin; with his javelin he gave me a wound. You see the marks; look! the old scar is still visible.

“Then ought I[40] to have been sent to the taking of Troy; then I might, if not have overcome, {still} have stayed the arms of the mighty Hector. But at that time Hector was not existing, or {but} a boy; {and} now my age is failing. Why tell thee of Periphas, the conqueror of the two-formed Pyretus? Why of Ampyx, who fixed his cornel-wood spear, without a point, full in the face of the four-footed Oëclus? Macareus, struck down the Pelethronian[41] Erigdupus,[42] by driving a crowbar into his breast. I remember, too, that a hunting spear, hurled by the hand of Nessus, was buried in the groin of Cymelus. And do not believe that Mopsus,[43] the son of Ampycus, only foretold things to come; a two-formed {monster} was slain by Mopsus, darting {at him}, and Odites in vain attempted to speak, his tongue being nailed to his chin, and his chin to his throat. Cæneus had put five to death, Stiphelus, and Bromus, and Antimachus, and Helimus, and Pyracmos, wielding the axe. I do not remember {their respective} wounds, {but} I marked their numbers, and their names. Latreus, most huge both in his limbs and his body, sallied forth, armed with the spoils of Emathian[44] Halesus, whom he had consigned to death. His age was between that of a youth, and an old man; his vigour that of a youth; grey hairs variegated his temples. Conspicuous by his buckler, and his helmet, and his Macedonian pike;[45] and turning his face towards both sides, he brandished his arms, and rode in one same round, and vaunting, poured forth thus many words into the yielding air:--

“‘And shall I put up with thee, too, Cænis? for to me thou shalt ever be a woman, to me always Cænis. Does not thy natal origin lower thy {spirit}? And does it not occur to thy mind for what {foul} deed thou didst get thy reward, and at what price the false resemblance to a man? Consider both what thou wast born, as well as what thou hast submitted to: go, and take up a distaff together with thy baskets, and twist the threads[46] with thy thumb; leave warfare to men.’ As he is vaunting in such terms, Cæneus pierces his side, stretched in running, with a lance hurled at him, just where the man is joined to the horse. He raves with pain, and strikes at the exposed face of the Phylleian [47] youth with his pike. It bounds back no otherwise than hail from the roof of a house; or than if any one were to beat a hollow drum with a little pebble. Hand to hand he encounters him, and strives to plunge his sword into his tough side; {but} the parts are impervious to his sword. ‘Yet,’ says he, ‘thou shalt not escape me; with the middle of the sword shalt thou be slain, since the point is blunt;’ and {then} he slants the sword against his side, and grasps his stomach with his long right arm. The blow produces an echo, as on a body of marble when struck; and the shivered blade flies different ways, upon striking his neck.

“After Cæneus had enough exposed his unhurt limbs to him in his amazement, ‘Come now,’ said he, ‘let us try thy body with my steel;’ and up to the hilt he plunged his fatal sword into his shoulder-blade, and extended his hand unseen into his entrails, and worked it about, and in the wound made a {fresh} wound. Lo! the double-limbed {monsters,} enraged, rush on in an impetuous manner, and all of them hurl and thrust their weapons at him alone. Their weapons fall blunted. Unstabbed and bloodless the Elateïan Cæneus remains from each blow. This strange thing makes them astonished. ‘Oh great disgrace!’ cries Monychus; ‘a {whole} people, we are overcome by one, and that hardly a man; although, {indeed}, he is a man; and we by our dastardly actions, are what he {once} was. What signify our huge limbs? What our twofold strength? What that our twofold nature has united in us the stoutest animals in existence? I neither believe that we are born of a Goddess for our mother, nor of Ixion, who was so great a person, that he conceived hopes of {even} the supreme Juno. By a half male foe are we baffled. Heap upon him stones and beams, and entire mountains, and dash out his long-lived breath, by throwing {whole} woods {upon him}. Let a {whole} wood press on his jaws; and weight shall be in the place of wounds.’

“{Thus} he said; and by chance having got a tree, thrown down by the power of the boisterous South wind, he threw it against the powerful foe: and he was an example {to the rest}; and in a short time, Othrys, thou wast bare of trees, and Pelion had no shades. Overwhelmed by this huge heap, Cæneus swelters beneath the weight of the trees, and bears on his brawny shoulders the piled-up oaks. But after the load has increased upon his face and his head, and his breath has no air to draw; at one moment he faints, at another he endeavours, in vain, to raise himself into the {open} air, and to throw off the wood cast {upon him}: and sometimes he moves it. Just as lo! we see, if lofty Ida is convulsed with earthquakes. The event is doubtful. Some gave out that his body was hurled to roomy Tartarus by the weight of the wood. The son of Ampycus denied this, and saw go forth into the liquid air, from amid the pile, a bird with tawny wings; which then was beheld by me for the first time, then, {too}, for the last. When Mopsus saw it with gentle flight surveying his camp, and making a noise around it with a vast clamour, following him both with his eyes and his feelings, he said, ‘Hail! thou glory of the Lapithæan race, once the greatest of men, but now the only bird {of thy kind}, Cæneus.’ This thing was credited from its assertor. Grief added resentment, and we bore it with disgust, that one was overpowered by foes so many. Nor did we cease to exercise our weapons, in {shedding their} blood, before a part of them was put to death, and flight and the night dispersed the rest.”

[Footnote 17: _This toil._--Ver. 146. Clarke translates ‘Hic labor,’ ‘This laborious bout.’]

[Footnote 18: _Its entrails._--Ver. 152. The ‘prosecta,’ or ‘prosiciæ,’ or ‘ablegamina,’ were portions of the animal which were the first cut off, for the purpose of becoming as a sacrifice to the Deities. The ‘prosecta,’ in general, consisted of a portion of the entrails.]

[Footnote 19: _Roasted flesh._--Ver. 155. We are informed by Servius, that boiled meat was not eaten in the heroic ages.]

[Footnote 20: _Melody of voices._--Ver. 157. Plutarch remarks, that that entertainment is the most pleasant where no musician is introduced; conversation, in his opinion, being preferable.]

[Footnote 21: _Perrhæbean._--Ver. 172. The Perrhæbeans were a people of Thessaly, who, having been conquered by the Lapithæ, betook themselves to the mountain fortresses of Pindus.]

[Footnote 22: _Eloquent old man._--Ver. 176-181. Clarke renders these lines, ‘Come, tell us, O eloquent old gentleman, the wisdom of our age, who was that Cæneus, and why he was turned into the other sex? in which war, or what engagement, he was known to you? by whom he was conquered, if he was conquered by any one?’ Upon that, the old blade replied.’]

[Footnote 23: _Two hundred._--Ver. 188. Ovid does not here follow the more probable version, that the age of Nestor was three generations of thirty years each.]

[Footnote 24: _The Atracian._--Ver. 209. ‘Atracides’ is an epithet, meaning ‘Thessalian,’ as Atrax, or Atracia, was a town of Thessaly, situated near the banks of the river Peneus.]

[Footnote 25: _Hippodame._--Ver. 210. She is called Ischomache by Propertius, and Deidamia by Plutarch.]

[Footnote 26: _With the fires._--Ver. 215. These fires would be those of the nuptial torches, and of the altars for sacrifice to Hymenæus and the other tutelary divinities of marriage.]

[Footnote 27: _Clots of blood._--Ver. 238. Clarke renders ‘Sanguinis globos,’ ‘goblets of blood.’]

[Footnote 28: _Double-limbed._--Ver. 240. Clarke translates, ‘Ardescunt bimembres,’ ‘The double-limbed fellows are in a flame.’]

[Footnote 29: _Shattered cask._--Ver. 243. ‘Cadi’ were not only earthenware vessels, in which wine was kept, but also the vessels used for drawing water.]

[Footnote 30: _A chandelier._--Ver. 247. ‘Funale’ ordinarily means, ‘a link,’ or ‘torch,’ made of fibrous substances twisted together, and smeared with pitch or wax. In this instance the word seems to mean a chandelier with several branches.]

[Footnote 31: _A votive stag._--Ver. 267. It appears that the horns of a stag were frequently offered as a votive gift to the Deities, especially to Diana, the patroness of the chase. Thus in the seventh Eclogue of Virgil, Mycon vows to present to Diana, ‘Vivacis cornua cervi,’ ‘The horns of a long-lived stag.’]

[Footnote 32: _Cheeks covered._--Ver. 291. ‘Prima tectus lanugine malas,’ is not very elegantly rendered by Clarke, ‘Having his chaps covered with down, then first putting out.’]

[Footnote 33: _Nessus._--Ver. 309. We have already seen how Nessus the Centaur met his death from the arrow of Hercules, when about to offer violence to Deïanira.]

[Footnote 34: _A wound in front._--Ver. 312. It has been suggested that, perhaps Ovid here had in his mind the story of one Pomponius, of whom Quintilian relates, that, having received a wound in his face, he was showing it to Cæsar, on which he was advised by the latter never to look behind him when he was running away.]

[Footnote 35: _Strap of his lance._--Ver. 321. The ‘amentum’ was the thong, or strap of leather, with which the lance, or javelin, was fastened, in order to draw it back when thrown.]

[Footnote 36: _Not used to bear._--Ver. 346. He alludes to the twofold nature, or ‘horse-part’ of the Centaur, as Clarke calls it.]

[Footnote 37: _The Dolopians._--Ver. 364. They were a people of Phthiotis and Thessaly.]

[Footnote 38: _Pierces two breasts._--Ver. 377. He says this by poetical license, in allusion to the two-fold form of the Centaurs.]

[Footnote 39: _Cyllarus._--Ver. 393. This was also the name of the horse which Castor tamed, to which Ovid alludes in the 401st line.]

[Footnote 40: _Then ought I._--Ver. 445. Nestor here shows a little of the propensity for boasting, which distinguishes him in the Iliad.]

[Footnote 41: _Pelethronian._--Ver. 452. Pelethronia was a region of Thessaly, which contained a town and a mountain of that name.]

[Footnote 42: _Erigdupus._--Ver. 453. The signification of this name is ‘The noise of strife.’]

[Footnote 43: _Mopsus._--Ver. 456. He was a prophet, and one of the Lapithæ. There are two other persons mentioned in ancient history of the same name.]

[Footnote 44: _Emathian._--Ver. 462. Properly, Emathia was a name of Macedonia; but it is here applied to Thessaly, which adjoined to that country.]

[Footnote 45: _Macedonian pike._--Ver. 466. The ‘sarissa’ is supposed to have been a kind of pike with which the soldiers of the Macedonia phalanx were armed. Its ordinary length was twenty-one feet; but those used by the phalanx were twenty-four feet long.]

[Footnote 46: _Twist the threads._--Ver. 475. The woof was called ‘subtegmen,’ ‘subtemen,’ or ‘trama,’ while the warp was called ‘stamen,’ from ‘stare,’ ‘to stand,’ on account of its erect position in the loom.]

[Footnote 47: _Phylleian._--Ver. 479. Phyllus was a city of Phthiotis, in Thessaly.]

EXPLANATION.

We learn from Diodorus Siculus, and other ancient authors, that the people of Thessaly, and those especially who lived near Mount Pelion, were the first who trained horses for riding, and used them as a substitute for chariots. Pliny the Elder says that they excelled all the other people of Greece in horsemanship, and that they carried it to such perfection, that the name of ἱππεὺς, ‘a horseman,’ and that of ‘Thessalian,’ became synonymous. Again, the Thessalians, from their dexterity in killing the wild bulls that infested the neighbouring mountains, sometimes with darts or spears, and at other times in close engagement, acquired the name of Hippocentaurs, that is, ‘horsemen that hunted bulls,’ or simply κένταυροι, ‘Centaurs.’

It is not improbable that, because the Thessalians began to practise riding in the reign of Ixion, the poets made the Centaurs his sons; and they were said to have a cloud for their mother, which Jupiter put in the place of Juno, to baulk the attempt of Ixion on her virtue, because, according to Palæphatus, many of them lived in a city called Nephele, which, in Greek, signifies a cloud. As another method of accounting for their alleged descent from a cloud, it has been suggested that the Centaurs were a rapacious race of men, who ravaged the neighbouring country: that those who wrote the first accounts of them, in the ancient dialect of Greece, gave them the name of Nephelim, (the epithet of the giants of Scripture,) many Phœnician words having been imported in the early language of that country; and that in later times, finding them called by this name, the Greek word Nephelè, signifying ‘a cloud,’ persons readily adopted the fable that they were born of one.

The Centaurs being the descendants of Centaurus, the son of Ixion, and Pirithoüs being also the son of Ixion, by Dia, the former, declared war against Pirithoüs, asserting, that, as the descendants of Ixion, they had a right to share in the succession to his dominions. This quarrel, however, was made up, and they continued on friendly terms, until the attempt of Eurytus, or Eurytion, on Hippodamia, the bride of Pirithoüs, which was followed by the consequences here described by Ovid. The Centaurs are twice mentioned in the Iliad as φῆρες, or ‘wild beasts,’ and once under the name of ‘Centaurs.’ Pindar is the first writer that mentions them as being of a twofold form, partly man, and partly horse. In the twenty-first Book of the Odyssey, line 295, Eurytion is said to have had his ears and nose cut off by way of punishment, and that, from that period, ‘discord arose between the Centaurs and men.’

Buttman, (Mythologus, ii. p. 22, as quoted by Mr. Keightley), says that the names of Centaurs and Lapithæ are two purely poetic names, used to designate two opposite races of men,--the former, the rude horse-riding tribes, which tradition records to have been spread over the north of Greece: the latter, the more civilized race, which founded towns, and gradually drove their wild neighbours back into the mountains. He thinks that the explanation of the word ‘Centaurs,’ as ‘Air-piercers,’ (from κεντεῖν τὴν αὔραν) not an improbable one, for the idea is suggested by the figure of a Cossack leaning forward with his protruded lance as he gallops along. But he regards the idea of κένταυρος, having been in its origin simply κέντωρ, as much more probable, [it meaning simply ‘the spurrer-on.’] Lapithæ may, he thinks, have signified ‘Stone persuaders,’ from λᾶας πείθειν, a poetic appellation for the builders of towns. He supposes Hippodamia to have been a Centauress, married to the prince of the Lapithæ, and thus accounts for the Centaurs having been at the wedding. Mr. Keightley, in his ‘Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy,’ remarks that ‘it is certainly not a little strange that a rude mountain race like the Centaurs should be viewed as horsemen; and the legend which ascribes the perfecting of the art of horsemanship to the Lapithæ, is unquestionably the more probable one. The name Centaur, which so much resembles the Greek verb κεντέω, ‘to spur,’ we fancy gave origin to the fiction. This derivation of it is, however, rather dubious.’

After the battle here described, the Centaurs retreated to the mountains of Arcadia. The Lapithæ pursuing them, drove them to the Promontory of Malea in Laconia, where, according to Apollodorus, Neptune took them into his protection. Servius and Antimachus, as quoted by Comes Natalis, say that some of them fled to the Isle of the Sirens (or rather to that side of Italy which those Nymphs had made their abode); and that there they were destroyed by the voluptuous and debauched lives they led.

The fable of Cæneus, which Ovid has introduced, is perhaps simply founded on the prodigious strength and the goodness of the armour of a person of that name. The story of Halyonome killing herself on the body of Cyllarus, may possibly have been handed down by tradition. It is not unlikely that, if the Centaurs were horsemen, their women were not unacquainted with horsemanship; indeed, representations of female Centaurs are given, on ancient monuments, as drawing the chariot of Bacchus.

FABLES V. AND VI. [XII.536-628]

Periclymenus, the brother of Nestor, who has received from Neptune the power of transforming himself, is changed into an eagle, in a combat with Hercules; and in his flight is shot by him with an arrow. Neptune prays Apollo to avenge the death of Cygnus: because the Destinies will not permit him to do so himself. Apollo enters the Trojan camp in disguise, and directs the arrow which Paris aims at Achilles; who is mortally wounded in the heel, the only vulnerable part of his body.

As the Pylian related this fight between the Lapithæ and the Centaurs, {but} half human, Tlepolemus[48] could not endure his sorrow for Alcides being passed by with silent lips, and said, “It is strange, old man, that thou shouldst have a forgetfulness of the exploits of Hercules; at least, my father himself used often to relate to me, that these cloud-begotten {monsters} were conquered by him.” The Pylian, sad at this, said, “Why dost thou force me to call to mind my misfortunes, and to rip up my sorrows, concealed beneath years, and to confess my hatred of, and disgust at, thy father? He, indeed, ye Gods! performed things beyond all belief, and filled the world with his services; which I could rather wish could be denied; but we are in the habit of praising neither Deiphobus nor Polydamas,[49] nor Hector himself: for who would commend an enemy? That father of thine once overthrew the walls of Messene, and demolished guiltless cities, Elis and Pylos, and carried the sword and flames into my abode. And, that I may say nothing of others whom he slew, we were twice six sons of Neleus, goodly youths; the twice six fell by the might of Hercules, myself alone excepted. And that the others were vanquished might have been endured; {but} the death of Periclymenus is wonderful; to whom Neptune, the founder of the Neleian family, had granted to be able to assume whatever shapes he might choose, and again, when assumed, to lay them aside. He, after he had in vain been turned into all other shapes, was turned into the form of the bird that is wont to carry the lightnings in his crooked talons, the most acceptable to the king of the Gods. Using the strength of {that} bird, his wings, and his crooked bill, together with his hooked talons, he tore the face of the hero. The Tirynthian hero aims at him his bow, too unerring, and hits him, as he moves his limbs aloft amid the clouds, and hovering {in the air}, just where the wing is joined to the side.

“Nor is the wound a great one, but his sinews, cut by the wound, fail him, and deny him motion and strength for flying. He fell down to the earth, his weakened pinions not catching the air; and where the smooth arrow had stuck in his wing, it was pressed {still further} by the weight of his pierced body, and it was driven, through the upper side, into the left part of the neck. Do I seem to be owing encomiums to the exploits of thy {father} Hercules, most graceful leader of the Rhodian fleet?[50] Yet I will no further avenge my brothers, than by being silent on his brave deeds: with thyself I have a firm friendship.” After the son[51] of Neleus had said these things with his honied tongue, the gifts of Bacchus being resumed after the discourse of the aged man, they arose from their couches: the rest of the night was given to sleep.

But the God who commands the waters of the sea with his trident, laments, with the affection of a father, the body of his son, changed into the bird of the son of Sthenelus; and abhorring the ruthless Achilles, pursues his resentful wrath in more than an ordinary manner. And now, the war having been protracted for almost twice five years, with such words as these he addresses the unshorn Smintheus:[52] “O thou, most acceptable to me, by far, of the sons of my brother, who, together with me, didst build the walls of Troy in vain; and dost thou not grieve when thou lookest upon these towers so soon to fall? or dost thou not lament that so many thousands are slain in defending these walls? and (not to recount them all) does not the ghost of Hector, dragged around his Pergamus, recur to thee? Though still the fierce Achilles, more blood-stained than war itself, lives on, the destroyer of our toil, let him but put himself in my power, I will make him feel what I can do with my triple spear. But since it is not allowed us to encounter the enemy in close fight, destroy him, when off his guard, with a secret shaft.”

He nodded his assent; and the Delian {God}, indulging together both his own resentment and that of his uncle, veiled in a cloud, comes to the Trojan army, and in the midst of the slaughter of the men, he sees Paris, at intervals, scattering his darts among the ignoble Greeks; and, discovering himself to be a Divinity, he says, “Why dost thou waste thy arrows upon the blood of the vulgar? If thou hast any concern for thy friends, turn upon the grandson of Æacus, and avenge thy slaughtered brothers.” {Thus} he said; and pointing at the son of Peleus, mowing down the bodies of the Trojans with the sword, he turned his bow towards him, and directed his unerring arrow with a fatal right hand. This was {the only thing} at which, after {the death of} Hector, the aged Priam could rejoice. And art thou then, Achilles, the conqueror of men so great, conquered by the cowardly ravisher of a Grecian wife? But if it had been fated for thee to fall by the hand of a woman, thou wouldst rather have fallen by the Thermodontean[53] battle-axe.

Now that dread of the Phrygians, the glory and defence of the Pelasgian name, the grandson of Æacus, a head invincible in war, had been burnt: the same Divinity had armed him,[54] and had burned him. He is now {but} ashes; and there remains of Achilles, so renowned, I know not what; that which will not well fill a little urn. But his glory lives, which can fill the whole world: this allowance is befitting that hero, and in this the son of Peleus is equal to himself, and knows not the empty Tartarus. Even his very shield gives occasion for war, that you may know to whom it belongs; and arms are wielded for arms. The son of Tydeus does not dare to claim them, nor Ajax, the son of Oïleus,[55] nor the younger son of Atreus, nor he who is his superior both in war and age, nor {any} others; the hope of so much glory exists only in him begotten by Telamon and {the son} of Laërtes. The descendant of Tantalus[56] removes from himself the burden and the odium {of a decision}, and orders the Argive leaders to sit in the midst of the camp, and transfers the judgment of the dispute to them all.

[Footnote 48: _Tlepolemus._--Ver. 537. He was a son of Hercules, by Astioche.]

[Footnote 49: _Polydamas._--Ver. 547. He was a noble Trojan, of great bravery, who had married a daughter of Priam.]

[Footnote 50: _Rhodian fleet._--Ver. 575. Tlepolemus, when a youth, slew his uncle, Lycimnius, the son of Mars. Flying from his country with some followers, he retired to the Island of Rhodes, where he gained the sovereignty. He went to the Trojan war with nine ships, to aid the Greeks, where he fell by the hand of Sarpedon.]

[Footnote 51: _After the son._--Ver. 578-9. ‘A sermone senis repetito munere Bacchi Surrexere toris.’ These words are thus quaintly rendered in Clarke’s translation: ‘From listening to the old gentleman’s discourse, they return again to their bottle; and taking the other glass, they departed.’]

[Footnote 52: _Smintheus._--Ver. 585. Apollo was so called, in many of the cities of Asia, and was worshipped under this name, in the Isle of Tenedos. He is said by Eustathius, to have been so called from Smynthus, a town near Troy. But, according to other accounts, he received the epithet from the Cretan word σμίνθος, a mouse; being supposed to protect man against the depredations of that kind of vermin.]

[Footnote 53: _Thermodontean._--Ver. 611. He alludes to Penthesilea, the Queen of the Amazons, who, aiding the Trojans against the Greeks, was slain by Achilles. The battle-axe was the usual weapon of the Amazons]

[Footnote 54: _Had armed him._--Ver. 614. Vulcan, the God of Fire, made his armour at the request of his mother, Thetis; and now his body was burned by fire.]

[Footnote 55: _Son of Oïleus._--Ver. 622. This was Ajax, the King of the Locrians.]

[Footnote 56: _Descendant of Tantalus._--Ver. 626. Agamemnon was the son of Atreus, grandson of Pelops, and great-grandson of Tantalus. He wisely refused to take upon himself alone the onus of deciding the contention between Ajax and Ulysses.]

EXPLANATION.

Periclymenus was the son of Neleus and Chloris, as we are told by Homer, Apollodorus, and other authors. According to these authors, Neleus, king of Orchomenus, was the son of Neptune, who assumed the form of the river Enipeus, the more easily to deceive Tyro, the daughter of Salmoneus. Neleus married Chloris, the daughter of Amphion, king of Thebes, who bore him eleven sons and one daughter, of which number, Homer names but three. Periclymenus, the youngest of the family, was a warlike prince, and, according to Apollodorus, accompanied Jason in the expedition of the Argonauts. Hercules, after having instituted the Olympic games, marched into Messenia, and declared war with Neleus. The ancient writers differ as to the cause of this expedition; but they agree in stating, that Hercules made himself master of Pylos, a town which Neleus had built, as a refuge from the capricious humours of his brother Pelias; and that Neleus and all his children were killed, except Nestor, who had been brought up among the Geranians, and who afterwards reigned in Pylos. The story which here relates how Periclymenus transformed himself into an eagle, and was then killed by Hercules, may possibly mean, that having long resisted the attacks of his formidable enemy, he was at length put to flight, and slain by an arrow. It is said that Neptune had given him the power to metamorphose himself into different figures, very probably because his grandfather, who was a maritime prince, had taught him the art of war and various stratagems, which he industriously made use of, to avert the ruin of his family.

In relation to the story of the death of Achilles, Dictys the Cretan tells us, that Achilles having seen Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, along with Cassandra, as she was sacrificing to Apollo, fell in love with her, and demanded her in marriage and that Hector would not consent to it, except on condition of his betraying the Greeks. This demand, so injurious to his honour, provoked Achilles so much, that he forthwith slew Hector, and dragged his body round the walls of the city. He further says that when Priam went to demand the body of Hector, he took Polyxena with him, in order to soften Achilles. His design succeeded, and Priam then agreed to give her to him in marriage. On the day appointed for the solemnity in the temple of Apollo, Paris, concealing himself behind the altar, while Deiphobus pretended to embrace Achilles, wounded him in the heel, and killed him on the spot, either because the arrow was poisoned, or because he was wounded on the great tendon, which has since been called ‘tendon Achillis,’ a spot where a wound might very easily be mortal.

This story of the death of Achilles does not seem to have been known to Homer; for he appears, in the twenty-fourth book of the Odyssey, to insinuate that that hero died in battle, fighting for the Grecian cause.

After his death Achilles was honoured as a Demigod, and Strabo says that he had a temple near the promontory of Sigæum. Pausanias and Pliny the Elder make mention of an island in the Euxine Sea, where the memory of Achilles was expressly honoured, from which circumstances it had the name of Achillea.

BOOK THE THIRTEENTH.

FABLE I. [XIII.1-438]

After the death of Achilles, Ajax and Ulysses contend for his armour; the Greek chiefs having adjudged it to the last, Ajax kills himself in despair, and his blood is changed into a flower. When Ulysses has brought Philoctetes, who is possessed of the arrows of Hercules, to the siege, and the destinies of Troy are thereby accomplished, the city is taken and sacked, and Hecuba becomes the slave of Ulysses.

The chiefs were seated; and a ring of the common people standing {around}, Ajax, the lord of the seven-fold shield, arose before them. And as he was impatient in his wrath, with stern features he looked back upon the Sigæan shores, and the fleet upon the shore, and, stretching out his hands, he said, “We are pleading,[1] O Jupiter, our cause before the ships, and Ulysses vies with me! But he did not hesitate to yield to the flames of Hector, which I withstood, {and} which I drove from this fleet. It is safer, therefore, for him to contend with artful words than with his {right} hand. But neither does my talent lie in speaking, nor his[2] in acting; and as great ability as I have in fierce warfare, so much has he in talking. Nor do I think, O Pelasgians, that my deeds need be related to you; for you have been eye-witnesses of them. Let Ulysses recount his, which he has performed without any witness, {and} of which night alone[3] is conscious. I own that the prize that is sought is great; but the rival of Ajax lessens its value. It is no proud thing, great though it may be, to possess any thing which Ulysses has hoped for. Already has he obtained the reward of this contest, in which, when he shall have been worsted, he will be said to have contended with me. And I, if my prowess were to be questioned, should prevail by the nobleness of my birth, being the son of Telamon, who took the city[4] of Troy under the valiant Hercules, and entered the Colchian shores in the Pagasæan ship. Æacus was his father, who there gives laws to the silent {shades}, where the heavy stone urges {downward} Sisyphus,[5] the son of Æolus.

“The supreme Jupiter owns Æacus, and confesses that he is his offspring. Thus Ajax is the third[6] from Jupiter. And yet, O Greeks, let not this line of descent avail me in this cause, if it be not common to me with the great Achilles. He was my cousin;[7] I ask for what belonged to my cousin? Why does one descended from the blood of Sisyphus, and very like him in thefts and fraud, intrude the name of a strange family among the descendants of Æacus? Are the arms to be denied me, because I took up arms before {him}, and through the means of no informer?[8] and shall one seem preferable who was the last to take them up, and who, by feigning madness, declined war, until the son of Nauplius,[9] more cunning than he, but more unhappy for himself, discovered the contrivance[10] of his cowardly mind, and dragged him forth to the arms which he had avoided. Now let him take the best arms who would have taken none. Let me be dishonoured, and stripped of the gifts that belonged to my cousin, who presented myself in the front of danger. And I could wish that that madness had been either real or believed {so to be}, and that he had never attended us as a companion to the Phrygian towers, this counsellor of evil! Then, son of Pœas,[11] Lemnos would not have had thee exposed {there} through our guilt; who now, as they say, concealed in sylvan caves, art moving the {very} rocks with thy groans, and art wishing for the son of Laërtes what he has deserved; which, may the Gods, the Gods, {I say}, grant thee not to pray in vain.

“And now, he that was sworn upon the same arms with ourselves, one of our leaders, alas! by whom, as his successor, the arrows of Hercules are used, broken by disease and famine, is being clothed[12] and fed by birds; and in shooting fowls, he is employing the shafts destined for the destruction of Troy. Still, he lives, because he did not accompany Ulysses. And the unhappy Palamedes would have preferred that he had been left behind; {then} he would have been living, or, at least, he would have had a death without any criminality. Him, {Ulysses} remembering too well the unlucky discovery of his madness, pretended to be betraying the Grecian interests, and proved his feigned charge, and shewed {the Greeks} the gold, which he had previously hidden in the ground. By exile then, or by death,[13] has he withdrawn from the Greeks their {best} strength. Thus Ulysses fights, thus is he to be dreaded. Though he were to excel even the faithful Nestor in eloquence, yet he would never cause me to believe that the forsaking of Nestor[14] was not a crime; who, when he implored {the aid of} Ulysses, retarded by the wound of his steed, and wearied with the years of old age, was deserted by his companion. The son of Tydeus knows full well that these charges are not invented by me, who calling on him often by name, rebuked him, and upbraided[15] his trembling friend with his flight. The Gods above behold the affairs of men with just eyes. Lo! he wants help, himself, who gave it not; and as he left {another}, so was he doomed to be left: {such} law had he made for himself.

“He called aloud to his companions. I came, and I saw him trembling, and pale with fear, and shuddering at the impending death. I opposed the mass of my shield {to the enemy}, and covered him[16] as he lay; and I preserved (and that is the least part of my praise) his dastardly life. If thou dost persist in vying, let us return to that place; restore the enemy, and thy wound, and thy wonted fear; and hide behind my shield, and under that contend with me. But, after I delivered him, he to whom his wounds {before} gave no strength for standing, fled, retarded by no wound {whatever}. Hector approaches, and brings the Gods along with him to battle, and where he rushes on, not only art thou alarmed, Ulysses, but even the valiant {are}; so great terror does he bring. Him, as he exulted in the successes of his bloodstained slaughter, in close conflict, I laid flat with a huge stone. Him demanding one with whom he might engage, did I alone withstand; and you, Greeks, prayed {it might fall} to my lot;[17] and your prayers prevailed. If you inquire into the issue of this fight, I was not beaten by him.

“Lo! the Trojans bring fire and sword, and Jove, {as well}, against the Grecian fleet. Where is now the eloquent Ulysses? I, forsooth, protected a thousand ships, the hopes of your return, with my breast. Grant me the arms, in return for so many ships. But, if I may be allowed to speak the truth, a greater honour is sought for them than is for me, and our glory is united; and Ajax is sought for the arms, and not the arms by Ajax. Let the Ithacan {Ulysses} compare with these things Rhesus,[18] and the unwarlike Dolon,[19] and Helenus,[20] the son of Priam, made captive with the ravished Pallas. By daylight nothing was done; nothing when Diomedes was afar. If once you give these arms for services so mean, divide them, and that of Diomedes would be the greater share of them. But, why these for the Ithacan? who, by stealth and unarmed, ever does his work, and deceives the unwary enemy by stratagem? The very brilliancy of his helmet, as it sparkles with bright gold, will betray his plans, and discover him as he lies hid. But neither will the Dulichian[21] head, beneath the helm of Achilles, sustain a weight so great; and the spear[22] from Pelion must be heavy and burdensome for unwarlike arms. Nor will the shield, embossed with the form of the great globe, beseem a dastard left hand, and one formed for theft. Why {then}, caitiff, dost thou ask for a gift that will {but} weaken thee? should the mistake of the Grecian people bestow it on thee, there would be a cause for thee to be stripped, not for thee to be dreaded by the enemy. Thy flight, too, (in which, alone, most dastardly {wretch}! thou dost excel all {others},) will be retarded, when dragging a load so great. Besides, that shield of thine, which has so rarely experienced the conflict, is unhurt; for mine, which is gaping in a thousand wounds from bearing the darts, a new successor must be obtained. In fine, what need is there for words? Let us be tried in action. Let the arms of that brave hero be thrown in the midst of the enemy: order them to be fetched thence, and adorn him that brings them back, with them so brought off.”

The son of Telamon had {now} ended, and a murmur among the multitude ensued upon his closing words, until the Laërtian hero stood up, and fixing his eyes, for a short time, on the ground, raised them towards the chiefs, and opened his mouth in the accents that were looked for; nor was gracefulness wanting to his eloquent words.

“If my prayers had been of any avail together with yours, Pelasgians, the successor to a prize so great would not {now} be in question, and thou wouldst now be enjoying thine arms, and we thee, O Achilles. But since the unjust Fates have denied him to me and to yourselves, (and here he wiped his eyes with his hands as though shedding tears,) who could better succeed the great Achilles than he through whom[23] the great Achilles joined the Greeks? Only let it not avail him that he seems to be as stupid as he {really} is; and let not my talents, which ever served you, O Greeks, be a prejudice to me: and let this eloquence of mine, if there is any, which now pleads for its possessor, and has often {done so} for yourselves, stand clear of envy, and let each man not disown his own advantages. For {as to} descent and ancestors, and the things which we have not made ourselves, I scarce call these our own. But, indeed, since Ajax boasts that he is the great grandson of Jove, Jupiter, too, is the founder of my family, and by just as many degrees am I distant from him. For Laërtes is my father, Arcesius his, Jupiter his; nor was any one of these {ever} condemned[24] and banished. Through the mother,[25] too, Cyllenian {Mercury}, another noble stock, is added to myself. On the side of either parent there was a God. But neither because I am more nobly born on my mother’s side, nor because my father is innocent of his brother’s blood, do I claim the arms {now} in question. By {personal} merit weigh the cause. So that it be no merit in Ajax that Telamon and Peleus were brothers; and {so that} not consanguinity, but the honour of merit, be regarded in {the disposal of} these spoils. Or if nearness of relationship and the next heir is sought, Peleus is his sire, and Pyrrhus is his son. What room, {then}, is there for Ajax? Let them be taken to Phthia[26] or to Scyros. Nor is Teucer[27] any less a cousin of Achilles than he; and yet does he sue for, does he expect to bear away the arms?

“Since then the contest is simply one of deeds; I, in truth, have done more than what it is easy for me to comprise in words. Yet I shall proceed in the order of events. {Thetis}, the Nereid mother, prescient of coming death, conceals her son by his dress. The disguise of the assumed dress deceived all, among whom was Ajax. Amid woman’s trinkets I mixed arms such as would affect the mind of a man. And not yet had the hero thrown aside the dress of a maiden, when, as he was brandishing a shield and a spear, I said, ‘O son of a Goddess, Pergamus reserves itself to fall through thee. Why, {then}, dost thou delay to overthrow the mighty Troy?’ And {then} I laid my hands on him, and to brave deeds I sent forth the brave. His deeds then are my own. ’Twas I that subdued Telephus, as he fought with his lance; ’twas I that recovered him, vanquished, and begging {for his life}. That Thebes has fallen, is my doing. Believe me, that I took Lesbos, that I {took} Tenedos, Chrysa[28] and Cylla, cities of Apollo, and Scyros {too}. Consider too, that the Lyrnessian[29] walls were levelled with the ground, shaken by my right hand. And, not to mention other things, ’twas I, in fact, that found one who might slay the fierce Hector; through me the renowned Hector lies prostrate. By those arms through which Achilles was found out, I demand these arms. To him when living I gave them; after his death I ask them back again.

“After the grief of one[30] had reached all the Greeks, and a thousand ships had filled the Eubœan Aulis, the breezes long expected were either not existing or adverse to the fleet; and the ruthless oracles commanded Agamemnon to slay his innocent daughter for the cruel Diana. This the father refuses, and is enraged against the Gods themselves, and, a king, he is still a father. By my words I swayed the gentle disposition of the parent to the public advantage. Now, indeed, I make this confession, and let the son of Atreus forgive me as I confess it; before a partial judge I upheld a difficult cause. Yet the good of the people and his brother, and the supreme power of the sceptre granted to him, influence him to balance praise against blood. I was sent, too, to the mother, who was not to be persuaded, but to be deceived with craft; to whom, if the son of Telamon had gone, until even now would our sails have been without wind. A bold envoy, too, I was sent to the towers of Ilium, and the senate-house of lofty Troy was seen and entered by me; and still was it filled with their heroes. Undaunted, I pleaded the cause which all Greece had entrusted to me; and I accused Paris, and I demanded back the plunder, and Helen {as well}; and I moved Priam and Antenor[31], related to Priam. But Paris and his brothers, and those who, under him, had been ravishers, scarce withheld their wicked hands; {and} this thou knowest, Menelaüs, and that was the first day of my danger in company with thee. It were a tedious matter to relate the things which, by my counsel and my valour, I have successfully executed in the duration of this tedious warfare.

“After the first encounter, the enemy for a long time kept themselves within the walls of the city, and there was no opportunity for open fight. At length, in the tenth year we fought. {And} what wast thou doing in the mean time, thou, who knowest of nothing but battles? what was the use of thee? But if thou inquirest into my actions: I lay ambuscades for the enemy; I surround the trenches[32] with redoubts; I cheer our allies that they may bear with patient minds the tediousness of a protracted war; I show, {too}, how we are to be supported, and how to be armed; I am sent[33] whither necessity requires. Lo! by the advice of Jove, the king, deceived by a form in his sleep, commands him to dismiss all care of the war {thus} begun. He is enabled, through the author of it, to defend his own cause. Ajax should not have allowed this, and should have demanded that Troy be razed. And he should have fought, the {only} thing he could do. Why, does he not stop them when about to depart? Why does he not take up arms, and {why not} suggest some course for the fickle multitude to pursue? This was not too much for him, who never says any thing but what is grand. Well, and didst thou take to flight? I was witness of it, and ashamed I was to see, when thou wast turning thy back, and wast preparing the sails of disgrace. Without delay, I exclaimed, ‘What are you doing? What madness made you, O my friends, quit Troy, {well nigh} taken? And what, in this tenth year, are you carrying home but disgrace?’

“With these and other {words}, for which grief itself had made me eloquent, I brought back the resisting {Greeks} from the flying fleet. The son of Atreus calls together his allies, struck with terror; nor, even yet, does the son of Telamon dare to utter a word; yet Thersites[34] dares to launch out against the kings with impudent remarks, although not unpunished by myself. I am aroused, and I incite the trembling citizens against the foe, and by my voice I reclaim their lost courage. From that time, whatever that man, whom I drew away as he was turning his back, may seem to have done bravely, is {all} my own. In fine, who of the Greeks is either praising thee, or resorts to thee; but with me the son of Tydeus shares his exploits; he praises me, and is ever confident while Ulysses is his companion. It is something, out of so many thousands of the Greeks, to be singled out alone by Diomedes. Nor was it lot that ordered me to go forth; and yet, despising the dangers of the night and of the enemy, I slew Dolon, {one} of the Phrygian race, who dared the same things that we {dared}; though not before I had compelled him[35] to disclose everything, and had learned what perfidious Troy designed. Everything had I {now} discovered, and I had nothing {further} to find out, and I might now have returned, with my praises going before me. Not content with that, I sought the tent of Rhesus, and in his own camp slew himself and his attendants. And thus, as a conqueror, and having gained my own desires, I returned in the captured chariot, resembling a joyous triumph. Deny me the arms of him whose horses the enemy had demanded as the price for {one} night’s service; and let Ajax be {esteemed} your greater benefactor.

“Why should I make reference to the troops of Lycian Sarpedon,[36] mowed down by my sword? With much bloodshed I slew Cœranos, the son of Iphitus, and Alastor, and Chromius, and Alcander, and Halius, and Noëmon, and Prytanis, and I put to death Thoön, with Chersidamas, and Charops, and Ennomos, impelled by his relentless fate; five of less renown fell by my hand beneath the city walls. I, too, fellow-citizens, have wounds, honourable in their place.[37] Believe not {his} crafty words; here! behold them.” And {then}, with his hand, he pulls aside his garment, and, “this is the breast,” says he, “that has been ever employed in your service.”

“But the son of Telamon has spent none of his blood on his friends for so many years, and he has a body without a {single} wound.[38] But what signifies that, if he says that he bore arms for the Pelasgian fleet against both the Trojans and Jupiter himself? I confess it, he did bear them; nor is it any part of mine with malice to detract from the good deeds {of others;} but let him not alone lay claim to what belongs to all, and let him give to yourselves, as well, some of the honour. The descendant of Actor, safe under the appearance of Achilles, repelled the Trojans, with their defender, from the ships on the point of being burnt. He, too, unmindful of the king, and of the chiefs, and of myself, fancies that he alone dared to engage[39] with Hector in combat, being the ninth in that duty, and preferred by favour of the lot. But yet, most brave {chief}, what was the issue of thy combat? Hector came off, injured by no wound. Ah, wretched me! with how much grief am I compelled to recollect that time at which Achilles, the bulwark of the Greeks, was slain: nor tears, nor grief, nor fear, hindered me from carrying his body aloft from the ground; on these shoulders, I say, on these shoulders I bore the body of Achilles, and his arms together {with him}, which now, too, I am endeavouring to bear off. I have strength to suffice for such a weight, {and}, assuredly, I have a soul that will be sensible of your honours.

“Was then, forsooth! his azure mother {so} anxious in her son’s behalf that the heavenly gifts, a work of so great ingenuity, a rough soldier, and one without any genius, should put on? For he will not understand the engravings on the shield; the ocean, and the earth, and the stars with the lofty heavens and the Pleïades, and the Hyades, and the Bear that avoids the sea, and the different cities, and the blazing sword of Orion; arms he insists on receiving, which he does not understand. What! and does he charge that I, avoiding the duties of this laborious war, came but late to the toil begun? and does he not perceive that {in this} he is defaming the brave Achilles? If he calls dissembling a crime, we have both of us dissembled. If delay {stands} for a fault, I was earlier than he. A fond wife detained me, a fond mother Achilles. The first part of our time was given to them, the rest to yourselves. I am not alarmed, if now I am unable to defend myself against this accusation, in common with so great a man. Yet he was found out by the dexterity of Ulysses, but not Ulysses {by that} of Ajax.

“And that we may not be surprised at his pouring out on me the reproaches of his silly tongue, against you, too, does he make objections worthy of shame. Is it base for me, with a false crime to have charged Palamedes, {and} honourable for you to have condemned him? But neither could {Palamedes}, the son of Nauplius, defend a crime so great, and so manifest; nor did you {only} hear the charges against him, {but} you witnessed them, and in the bribe {itself} the charge was established. Nor have I deserved to be accused, because Lemnos, {the isle} of Vulcan, {still} receives {Philoctetes}, the son of Pœas. {Greeks}, defend your own acts! for you consented to it. Nor yet shall I deny that I advised him to withdraw himself from the toils of the warfare and the voyage, and to try by rest to assuage his cruel pains. He consented, and {still} he lives. This advice was not only well-meant, but {it was} fortunate as well, when ’twas enough to be well-meant. Since our prophets demand him for the purpose of destroying Troy, entrust not that to me. The son of Telamon will be better to go, and by his eloquence will soften the hero, maddened by diseases and anger, or by some wile will skilfully bring him thence. Sooner will Simoïs flow backward, and Ida stand without foliage, and Achaia promise aid to Troy, than, my breast being inactive in your interest, the skill of stupid Ajax shall avail the Greeks.

“Though thou be, relentless Philoctetes, enraged against thy friends and the king, and myself, though thou curse and devote my head, everlastingly, and though thou wish to have me in thy anguish thrown in thy way perchance, and to shed my blood; and though if I meet thee, so thou wilt have the opportunity of meeting me, still will I attempt {thee, and} will endeavour to bring thee back with me. And, if Fortune favours me, I will as surely be the possessor of thy arrows, as I was the possessor of the Dardanian prophet[40] whom I took {prisoner; and so} I revealed the answers of the Deities and the fates of Troy; {and} as I carried off the hidden statue[41] of the Phrygian Minerva from the midst of the enemy. And does Ajax, {then}, compare himself with me? The Fates, in fact, would not allow Troy to be captured without that {statue}. Where is the valiant Ajax? where are the boastful words of that mighty man? Why art thou trembling here? Why dares Ulysses to go through the guards, and to entrust himself to the night, and, through fell swords, to enter not only the walls of Troy, but even its highest towers, and to tear the Goddess from her shrine, and, {thus} torn, to bear her off amid the enemy?

“Had I not done these things, in vain would the son of Telamon been bearing the seven hides of the bulls on his left arm. On that night was the victory over Troy gained by me; then did I conquer Pergamus, when I rendered it capable of being conquered. Forbear by thy looks,[42] and thy muttering, to show me the son of Tydeus; a part of the glory in these things is his own. Neither wast thou alone, when for the allied fleet thou didst grasp thy shield: a multitude was attending thee, {while} but one fell to me: who, did he not know that a fighting man is of less value than a wise one, and that the reward is not the due of the invincible right hand, would himself, too, have been suing for these {arms}; the more discreet Ajax would have been suing, and the fierce Eurypilus,[43] and the son of the famous Andremon;[44] no less, {too} would Idomeneus,[45] and Meriones[46] sprung from the same land, and the brother of the greater son of Atreus have sought them. But these, brave in action, (nor are they second to thee in war,) have {all} yielded to my wisdom. Thy right hand is of value in war, {but} thy temper is one that stands in need of my direction. Thou hast strength without intelligence; I have a care for the future. Thou art able to fight; with me, the son of Atreus chooses the {proper} time for fighting. Thou only art of service with thy body; I with my mind: and as much as he who guides the bark, is superior to the capacity of the rower, as much as the general is greater than the soldier, so much do I excel thee; and in my body there is an intellect that is superior to hands: in that {lies} all my vigour.

“But you, ye chieftains, give the reward to your watchful {servant;} and for the cares of so many years which I have passed in anxiety, grant this honour as a compensation for my services. Our toil is now at its close; I have removed the opposing Fates, and by rendering it capable of being taken, {in effect} I have taken the lofty Pergamus. Now, by our common hopes, and the walls of the Trojans doomed to fall, and by those Gods whom lately I took from the enemy, by anything that remains, through wisdom to be done; if, too, anything {remains} of bold enterprize, and to be recovered from a dangerous spot; if you think that anything is still wanting for the downfall of Troy; {then} remember me; or if you give not me the arms, concede them to this;” and {then} he discovers the fatal statue of Minerva.

The body of the chiefs is moved, and {then}, in fact appears what eloquence can do; and the fluent man receives the arms of a brave one. He, who so often has alone withstood both Hector, and the sword, and flames, and Jove {himself}, cannot {now} withstand his wrath alone, and grief conquers the man that is invincible. He seizes his sword, and he says:-- “This, at least, is my own; or will Ulysses claim this, too, for himself. This must I use against myself; and {the blade}, which has often been wet with the blood of the Phrygians, will now be wet with the slaughter of its owner: that no one but Ajax {himself}, may be enabled to conquer Ajax.”

{Thus} he said; and he plunged the fatal sword into his breast, then for the first time suffering a wound, where it lay exposed to the steel. Nor were his hands able to draw out the weapon there fixed: the blood itself forced it out. And the earth, made red by the blood, produced a purple flower from the green turf, {the same} which had formerly been produced from the Œbalian wound. Letters common to {that} youth and to the hero, were inscribed in the middle of the leaves; the latter {belonging to} the name,[47] the former to the lamentation.

The conqueror, Ulysses, set sail for the country of Hypsipyle,[48] and of the illustrious Thoas, and the regions infamous for the slaughter {there} of the husbands of old; that he might bring back the arrows, the weapons of the Tirynthian {hero}. After he had carried them back to the Greeks, their owner attending too, the concluding hand was put, at length, to this protracted war. Troy and Priam fell together; the wretched wife of Priam lost after every thing {else} her human form, and alarmed a foreign air[49] with her barkings. Where the long Hellespont is reduced into a narrow compass, Ilion was in flames; nor had the flames yet ceased; and the altar of Jove had drank up the scanty blood of the aged Priam. The priestess of Apollo[50] dragged by the hair, extends her unavailing hands towards the heavens. The victorious Greeks drag along the Dardanian matrons, embracing, while they may, the statues of their country’s Gods, and clinging to the burning temples, an envied spoil. Astyanax[51] is hurled from those towers from which he was often wont, when shown by his mother, to behold his father, fighting for himself, and defending the kingdom of his ancestors.

And now Boreas bids them depart, and with a favourable breeze, the sails, as they wave, resound, {and} the sailors bid them take advantage of the winds. “Troy, farewell!” the Trojan women cry;-- “We are torn away!” and they give kisses to the soil, and leave the smoking roofs of their country. The last that goes on board the fleet, a dreadful sight, is Hecuba, found amid the sepulchres of her children. Dulichian hands have dragged her away, while clinging to their tombs and giving kisses to their bones; yet the ashes of one has she taken out, and, {so} taken out, has carried with her in her bosom the ashes of Hector. On the tomb of Hector she leaves the grey hair of her head, an humble offering, her hair and her tears. There is opposite to Phrygia, where Troy stood, a land inhabited by the men of Bistonia. There, was the rich palace of Polymnestor, to whom thy father, Polydorus, entrusted thee, to be brought up privately, and removed thee {afar} from the Phrygian arms. A wise resolution; had he not added, {as well}, great riches, the reward of crime, the incentive of an avaricious disposition. When the fortunes of the Phrygians were ruined, the wicked king of the Phrygians took a sword, and plunged it in the throat of his fosterchild; and, as though the crime could be removed with the body, he hurled him lifeless from a rock into the waters below.

[Footnote 1: _We are pleading._--Ver. 5. The skill of the Poet is perceptible in the abrupt commencement of the speech of the impetuous Ajax.]

[Footnote 2: _Nor his._--Ver. 11. Ajax often uses the pronoun ‘iste’ as a term of reproach.]

[Footnote 3: _Night alone._--Ver. 15. By this he means that the alleged exploits of Ulysses were altogether fictitious; or that they were done in the dark to conceal his fear.]

[Footnote 4: _Took the city._--Ver. 23. Telamon, was the companion of Hercules when he sacked Troy, as a punishment for the perfidy of Laomedon.]

[Footnote 5: _Sisyphus._--Ver. 26. This is intended as a reproachful hint against Ulysses, whose mother, Anticlea, was said to have been seduced by Sisyphus before her marriage to Laërtes.]

[Footnote 6: _Ajax is the third._--Ver. 28. That is the third, exclusive of Jupiter; for Ajax was the grandson of Æacus, and the great grandson of Jupiter.]

[Footnote 7: _My cousin._--Ver. 31. ‘Frater’ here means, not ‘brother,’ but ‘cousin,’ as Peleus and Telamon, the fathers of Achilles and Ajax, were brothers.]

[Footnote 8: _No informer._--Ver. 34. He alludes to the means which Ulysses adopted to avoid going to the Trojan war. Pretending to be seized with madness, he ploughed the sea-shore, and sowed it with salt. To ascertain the truth, Palamedes placed his infant son, Telemachus, before the plough; on which Ulysses turned on one side, to avoid hurting the child, which was considered a proof that his madness was not real.]

[Footnote 9: _Son of Nauplius._--Ver. 39. Palamedes was the son of Nauplius, the king of Eubœa, and a son of Neptune.]

[Footnote 10: _The contrivance._--Ver. 38. Ulysses forged a letter from Priam, in which the king thanked Palamedes for his intended assistance to the Trojan cause, and begged to present him a sum of money. By bribing the servants of Palamedes, he caused a large quantity of gold to be buried in the ground, under his tent. He then caused the letter to be intercepted, and to be carried to Agamemnon. On the appearance of Palamedes to answer the charge, Ulysses appeared seemingly as his friend, and suggested, that if no gold should be found in his possession, he must be innocent. The gold, however, being found, Palamedes was stoned to death.]

[Footnote 11: _Son of Pœas._--Ver. 45. Philoctetes was the possessor of the arrows of Hercules, without the presence of which Troy could not be taken. Accompanying the Greeks to the Trojan war, he was wounded in the foot by one of the arrows; and the smell arising from the wound was so offensive, that, by the advice of Ulysses, he was left behind, in the island of Lemnos, one of the Cyclades.]

[Footnote 12: _Is being clothed._--Ver. 53. The Poet Attius, as quoted by Cicero, says that Philoctetes, while in Lemnos, made himself clothing out of the feathers of birds.]

[Footnote 13: _Or by death._--Ver. 61. Exile in the case of Philoctetes; death, in that of Palamedes.]

[Footnote 14: _Forsaking of Nestor._--Ver. 64. Nestor having been wounded by Paris, and being overtaken by Hector, was on the point of perishing, when Diomedes came to his rescue, Ulysses having taken to flight. See the Iliad,